


Tumult

by unwindmyself



Series: curious shapes shift in the dark [71]
Category: True Blood
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Female Friendship, Fix-It, Gen, Gun Violence, Healing, Inspirational Speeches, Male-Female Friendship, agency and choices!, canon-typical bigotry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-07
Updated: 2015-02-07
Packaged: 2018-03-10 21:54:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3304790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unwindmyself/pseuds/unwindmyself
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As the night winds down Willa tries to play polite hostess, but outside interlopers have other plans.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tumult

**Author's Note:**

> Part four, "Angel At My Table."
> 
>  **Original Characters** :Noël Beringer, Greg Whitely and his lineless compatriots, Isi Hill, Ghaliya Kazdaghli, Asra Amirmoez, Tiffany Babineaux, Devi Avninder, Rhys Averill, Vanessa Quinones, Antoine Henriques, Brandon Daly, Josh Taylor, implied Heather Rosen, implied Brittany Hewitt, implied Mallory Cambridge, implied Amarie Cambridge

“Hey, kid,” Noël calls to Willa.  “You wanna say a few words while you’ve got an audience?”

Willa glances at the crowd.  A few miscellaneous pairs are still on the dance floor, but most guests have migrated to the booths, the vampires sharing bottles of TruBlood and the humans sipping beers or cocktails.  Pam’s friends took one of Jessica’s friends (Tiffany, who is apparently the quintessential kinky wolf in innocent sheep’s clothing) into the ladies’ for a perfectly consensual snack, Lafayette and Isi are using the men’s for a smoke and the other activists are keeping the fairy girls occupied enough that they won’t make an attempt at joining the pot party.

“Yeah,” Willa agrees.  “I oughta.”

She takes the stage, smiling nervously at her vampire father; Eric doesn’t rise from his throne, instead simply nodding in a show of concession.  “Their attention is yours if you can command it,” he says.

“Hey, y’all,” Willa calls out.

A few guests look up, but most of them keep their attention on their individual pursuits.

“Our hostess has a few words,” Noël attempts.

A few more heads snap up.

“Everybody, my little sister apparently wants to make an announcement,” Pam shouts from her seat at the bar.  Once she’s got everyone’s attention she nods to Willa in a silent _take it away_.

“Okay,” Willa says loudly, clasping her hands together in front of her.  “So I guess I just wanted to say… thanks.”

“For what, sweetie?” Jessica asks from her current position (sitting on the stage leaning against Nora, who’s leaning against the side of Eric’s throne).

“Well, thanks for makin’ this a nice night,” Willa begins.  “Thanks t’all y’all who helped us save the world and stuff.”

“Ruin the world, more like,” an older fellow at the bar grumbles, loud enough for everyone to hear.

Immediately, all the vampires look at each other, as if asking _Is that someone you know?_

“What are you talkin’ about?” Willa asks, frowning.

“Abominations,” the man mutters.  He turns to face the crowd and just as all the fairies start shouting, “Shit!  Look out!” he pulls out a gun and aims it in Willa’s direction.

Willa screams, hitting the floor – it’s a silver bullet, but not one of the high-tech ones, and it only gets her in her shoulder, not her heart – and in an instant Tara has wrapped a bar towel around the man’s throat, yanking him back in a stranglehold.

“Party crasher,” she mutters, rolling her eyes.

“Bad enough you’re soulless demons,” the man manages to say.  “But actin’ like sluts and draggin’ kids into your homosexual orgies –”

“Everybody, _get the fuck down_!” Eric shouts, just as another few uncostumed so-called guests (two men, one woman) spring up from around the room (one at the other end of the bar, one tucked in a booth, one idling on the side of the dance floor) and open fire.  A muffled _boom_ sounds from the direction of the bathrooms, and after a hurried silent conference between her and Tara, before anyone can stop her, Pam dashes off in that direction.

Looking more confused than anything else, Isi and Lafayette come hurrying out of the men’s room just as Pam passes.  “What the fuck’s goin’ on?” Lafayette asks, worried.

“Anarchy, if the assholes have their way,” Pam mutters, pushing into the ladies’ to investigate.  “Y’all stay in there where it’s safe.”  She waves a hand toward the men until they run back into the restroom and shut the door.

Sure enough, a small explosive went off in one of the stalls – not the threesome-sized handicapped stall, where Ghaliya and Asra and Tiffany had been parked, but the one beside it.  “I hope this wasn’t your idea of a fun party,” Asra drawls. 

She’s the best off out of the three of them, with only slight burns and a few scratches from scattering debris to be seen; Ghaliya is collapsed against her progeny’s lap, groaning over her burns as she waits for them to heal, glaring at the bones jutting out of her hand.  Tiffany, meanwhile, is huddled in the far corner of the stall, sobbing and bleeding from at least two places on her arm and another on her hip.

“Some shitheads who think they’re the fuckin’ militia,” Pam mutters.  “You stay in here and heal up.  They’re still tryin’ to raise hell out there.”  She glances at Tiffany, sighing.  “One of you wanna heal up the human or should I?”

“I don’t think we’re either of us in any condition to help, _chérie_ ,” Ghaliya sighs, wincing as her bones knit back together much too slowly for her liking.

Pam makes a face, because honestly she doesn’t know when she turned into some blood bank for twee little children, but – it’d be bad form to have casualties their first night back.  She approaches the girl and tries to make her voice as soothing as possible (which isn’t very soothing at all).  “Cutie, I’m gonna give you some blood, okay?”

Tiffany stops crying just long enough to pout dramatically.  “I wanna go to the hospital,” she says.  “An’ shouldn’t someone be callin’ the cops?”

“It’s possible someone is,” Pam says, “but the ambulance ain’t gonna get here quick enough and I’m not feelin’ like cleanin’ up any bodies tonight.”

“I doubt that’s helping,” Asra provides with a smirk.

“C’mon, just open up and let me fix it,” Pam urges.  She pierces her wrist with a fang and holds it up with an expectant expression and finally Tiffany takes it, drinking as slowly as she can to make some sort of point.

“Excellent bedside manner,” Ghaliya drawls.

 

* * *

 

It’s a bit more chaotic in the main room: Tara still has the ringleader pinned against the bar and Sam and Luna (still in human form, as given the obvious agenda of the attackers they figure shifting will just cause more trouble than it’s worth) are on either side of him holding his arms back, but the other three humans are still firing as fast as they can load and reload their guns. 

One of the men aims at Willa, who’s in the corner rummaging for weapons, and a bullet strikes her in the hip. “Fuck!” she cries.

“Oh, hell no,” Braelyn shouts, scrambling out from under the table that she, her sisters, Nicole, Vanessa, and Antoine are using as a shield.

“Braelyn Bellefleur, get back down here this instant,” Adilyn barks, as commandingly as possible.

But Braelyn doesn’t listen, aiming light right at the shooter’s head. He falls back against the floor, firing bullets at the ceiling as he goes, and immediately his friends stop shooting at the guests (all crammed beneath tables now, though a few are nursing bullet wounds) and vampires (Noël has already been hit and the chest and recovered, to say nothing of his poor speakers, Nora is still healing from a bullet to the knee) and they take aim at Braelyn.

Adilyn watches all of this from her limited vantage, then groans and lightning-fast she leaps up to blast the remaining man; Jessica and Willa go for the woman simultaneously, Willa twisting her arms back and Jessica locking eyes to start a glamour.

“Brae, get down!” Danika shouts, tugging her sister’s wrist.

“Enough!” Eric roars, leaping from the stage (Nora mutters something like “about time, I don’t need babied every time I take a bullet”) and storming toward Jessica and Willa. He nods to his sister, and the two of them move to glamour the fairy-stunned attackers.

“Y’all are never gonna get away with this,” the leader grumbles.

“Shut the fuck up,” Tara snaps, tightening her hold on his throat.

“You’re going to head home and forget you were ever a part of this sad rebellion,” Nora whispers.

“You will never, ever return to this bar or any other like it,” Eric says. “And you _will_ leave your weapons.”

“You will get the fuck out and stop bein’ a shitheel hate-monger,” Jessica mutters. “And maybe tell all your friends to do the same.”

“Definitely tell them that,” Nora murmurs in an aside.

Almost in unison, they break their glamours and send the shooters walking dazed to the door.

“Now,” Eric exclaims, turning to face the leader. “You, I would like to have words with. Tara, Nora, be so kind as to help me get him downstairs.”

They move to do that, Sam and Luna only releasing their hold once Nora is there to take it up, and as they head toward the basement, Jessica tips her head back to shout, “Everyone check yourselves for injuries. Everyone who’s gonna need medical attention, over to the DJ booth.”

Noël gets the picture and waves his hand. “This way,” he calls.

Devi and Rhys join him – thankfully, neither of them got hit. “Any of you who got hurt too serious, we’ve got ambulances on the way,” Rhys elaborates, waving his phone.

“If you only sustained minor injuries, we can take care of you here,” Devi adds. To Jessica she says, “First aid kit?”

“In the office,” Jessica says. “Willa?”

Willa runs to get that, and gradually guests begin easing out from under their table-forts, muttering to themselves and checking each other for wounds.

“Everyone who’s doin’ okay, over by the bar for now,” Jessica mandates. “We’ll get y’all cabs if you need ‘em, but right now we gotta take care of the injured, okay?”

 

* * *

 

Devi and Rhys once again take charge of medical matters, and everyone’s glad of their presence: they just take off their suit jackets, roll up their sleeves, and get to work disinfecting and bandaging and finding the appropriate over-the-counter medicine. Noël and Willa both offer to donate blood if it’s needed, but the guests are pretty clearly divided into those with injuries too minor to warrant it (the cut on Nicole’s cheek from a bullet skimming by her, the sprained ankle Charlaine managed to sustain in the chaos of taking cover) and those with injuries too major-but-not-life-threatening for the medical students to want to rely on it (Brandon and Josh sporting twin bullet-holes in their arms from trying to protect their friends) so instead Noël goes outside to chaperone people into the ambulances and into their cars and Willa sits with the completely unharmed guests, keeping conversation light and distracting.

And with Pam still in the ladies’ and the other three down in the dungeon with the ringleader, it falls to Jessica to be in charge. She checks on everyone individually, thanking Sam and Luna for their help and apologizing to her college friends and grabbing towels and a mop for Antoine and Vanessa and Nicole to help clean up with, and as she’s making the rounds Sookie grabs her wrist to stop her a moment.

“Hey,” she says softly.

“Hey, Sookie,” Jessica murmurs. “You doin’ okay? You didn’t get hit or anything?”

“Nah, I’m okay,” Sookie shrugs. “First, I wanted t’apologize for not hearin’ that guy when he came in, or hearin’ any of his friends.”

“Hey, no, don’t worry about it!” Jessica exclaims, furrowing her brow. “That’s not on you. I mean, who the hell knows when they even came in, it coulda been only a couple minutes before they went apeshit on us.”

Sookie shrugs sheepishly. “Still,” she says. “And second, I wanted t’say, good job tonight, with all this.”

Jessica pulls a face. “What d’you mean?”

“Just…” Sookie waves a hand around. “Takin’ care of everyone as best you could.”

“Oh.” It’s the first time that Jessica realizes the significance of what she’s been doing, given the slightly stunned expression she adopts. “Thanks, I guess. I was just doin’ whatever needed to be done.”

Sookie nods. What it amounts to, she feels like, is a big sister watching her little sister really act like a grown-up, but she doesn’t want to offend Jessica by trying to explain it further.

“You wanna go tell Pam it’s okay for them t’come out?” Jessica asks instead of trying to figure out something else to fill the silence.

“Yeah, ‘course,” Sookie agrees, heading off with that intention.

Jessica backs up to survey everything, feeling suddenly exhausted, and mostly because it dimly occurs to her that it’ll be the best place to see things from she perches in Eric’s throne, then collapses against the back of it.

Soon Pam and Ghaliya and Asra and Tiffany and Lafayette and Isi and Sookie emerge from the restrooms and Eric and Nora and Tara emerge from the basement, the former group all looking relieved and the latter group looking mostly tired and bloody (Eric’s football kit and both the women’s dresses are ruined, and when Sookie looks over to notice this she thinks she doesn’t really want to know why), and they converge at the counter.

“Looks like an interloper,” Pam smirks, nodding toward the throne.

“Be nice,” Sookie snaps, “she’s more than earned it.”

Eric and Nora glance at each other, then shrug. “Let’s get this place cleaned up and get home,” Eric suggests. “I don’t think Greg will be making any more trouble for us.”


End file.
